Oroville >> The good news is Lake Oroville surpassed the 700-foot-elevation mark on Christmas Day. The bad news is the water is still a very long way from the top.

The lake had dropped drastically over the summer and fall due to the drought, nearly reaching the record low of 645 feet, set in September 1977.

Then the rains came, stopping the water’s swift decline just before Thanksgiving at 647.74 feet.

A series of wet storms during December brought the lake back up to where boaters could again use the Bidwell Canyon Launch Facility, which had been closed when the lake level fell.

Rising approximately 54 feet, the water level passed the 700-foot mark on Monday and continued rising.

On Christmas Day, the lake arose to just over 705 feet in the afternoon, but by Friday morning it was down to 699 feet.

The rapid rise in the lake level doesn’t mean the drought is over. State Department of Water Resources said in a press release Tuesday that reservoirs are unlikely to be recharged to normal levels unless precipitation and snowpack this water year are both “well above historical averages.”

The lake is at 37 percent capacity, just 60 percent of what is normal for this time of year. There’s 1.3 million acre-feet of water behind the dam, but normally on Dec. 26 there are more than 2.1 million acre-feet. Capacity is more than 3.5 million acre-feet.

It’s about the same at Lake Shasta, which is at 39 percent of capacity, 64 percent of what’s normal. With just under 1.8 million acre-feet in storage, it’s a full million acre-feet short of what’s normal for this time of year.

State officials plan to conduct snow surveys at higher elevations on Tuesday to get a picture of how much that might add to the lakes in spring.